c. 2003 Religion News Service
Pastor Found Guilty on Gay Wedding Charge, Cleared on Ordination Charge
(RNS) A Presbyterian court has found a Cincinnati minister guilty of presiding at weddings for same-sex couples, but refused to suspend him or remove him from his pulpit.
The Rev. Stephen Van Kuiken was formally “rebuked” for presiding at gay weddings and was acquitted of a charge that he broke church law by ordaining noncelibate gays and lesbians as pastors and elders. Van Kuiken acknowledged both acts.
Van Kuiken, pastor of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church, said he will appeal his guilty verdict to a regional court. He said he would continue to marry gay couples and ordain openly gay church officers.
“I just have to be true to myself, and that’s the best I can do,” he told reporters after the verdict was released Monday (April 21). “Our congregation has always felt that these ceremonies are marriages in every way. … Gay people are equal.”
The Presbyterian Church (USA) allows same-sex unions as long as they are not equated with marriage. While the seven-member court found Van Kuiken guilty, it gave him the least severe punishment. “If you perform services of holy union, you are directed to take special care to avoid any confusion of such services with Christian marriage,” the court said in its ruling.
The denomination also prohibits actively gay pastors and elders. Van Kuiken was cleared of the charge on a technicality, because church law says congregations, not their pastors, hold the power of ordination. The court said Van Kuiken could not be held guilty for presiding at the ordinations.
Both sides agree this will probably not be Van Kuiken’s last court appearance. “The rebuke is a warning to me that next time the penalty will be more severe,” he said. A dissenting member of the court, Charles H. Brown III, said, “All of us will be forced to go through this exercise again” because of Van Kuiken’s promised defiance.
Pro-gay groups in the church welcomed the court’s decision. “The time for postponing justice to wait for the next study committee, the next task force report, the next call to earnestly study the issue, is over,” said a joint statement from More Light Presbyterians and That All May Freely Serve.
The Rev. Parker Williamson, head of the conservative Presbyterian Lay Committee, said the case will likely come up at next month’s churchwide General Assembly meeting in Denver. “Now the question before the Presbyterian Church (USA) is, will it enforce its standards? Will it require compliance?” he said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Russian Orthodox Christians Go to Jerusalem for Easter Season Prayers
MOSCOW (RNS) A delegation of 120 Russian politicians, celebrities and churchmen is flying to Jerusalem this weekend to initiate what it is billing as a worldwide Orthodox Christian prayer for peace on the day before Easter, which many of the world’s Orthodox churches mark on Sunday (April 27).
“This prayer will resonate throughout society,” said Archimandrite Mark (Golovkov) at a Tuesday news conference announcing the “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.” “The church can have an influence on society. As the patriarch likes to say, the church is separated from the government but not from society.”
The project, endorsed by leading government officials, is being promoted by groups connected to the 80 million-member Russian Orthodox Church, the largest branch of Orthodox Christianity. Organizers enlisted the prayer support of 14 of the 15 main branches of world Orthodoxy. The one holdout was the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, whose leader is ailing.
The delegation, led by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov, plans on spending less than 24 hours in Jerusalem, where members will pray with the Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem. The delegation will return by charter jet with a flame from Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher and present it to Patriarch Alexy II just in time for the midnight Easter liturgy in the Russian capital, the organizers said.
For Orthodox Christians, Easter is by far the most important religious holiday. The Russian Orthodox Church calculates the date of Easter using the Julian calendar, which was abandoned as inaccurate in the West in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
Archimandrite Mark, a vice chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s department of external church relations, lived in a Jerusalem monastery for seven years in the 1990s and said he also hopes the prayer campaign will yield democratization and political stability in the Middle East.
Other leaders of the first-time prayer project were more circumspect.
“It would be silly to plan for the results of our prayers. But all of us know and believe in the power of prayer,” said Georgy Poltavchenko, a powerful Russian official who had a successful career in the KGB secret police before entering politics.
_ Frank Brown
Russian Patriarch May Meet Italian Premier in Opening to Vatican
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Patriarch Alexy II is reported willing to meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi amid signs the Russian Orthodox Church may be ready to improve relations with the Vatican.
The Italian news agency ANSA quoted a spokesman for Alexy, Igor Vizhanov, as saying in Moscow on Monday (April 21) that he believed the patriarch would agree to a request from Berlusconi for a meeting.
Berlusconi said Friday (April 18) at a news conference with visiting Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov that during recent talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow he had discussed the possibility of his acting as mediator between the two churches to try to clear the way for the visit that Pope John Paul II hopes to make to Russia.
Putin suggested a firm date for the meeting, Berlusconi said. He did not disclose the date.
Vizhanov said, however, such a meeting would be useful only if Berlusconi were first able to convince the Vatican to seek solutions to long-standing issues that have blocked a meeting between the patriarch and the pope.
Alexy has repeatedly accused the Catholic Church of proselytizing and has objected to the increasing strength of the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Kasyanov said at the news conference the Russian government also is trying to mend relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church. “Sooner or later this effort will succeed,” he said.
“Although such a question is not in the competence of the government, we think that the pope will soon be able to come,” Russian news agencies quoted Kasyanov as telling reporters Tuesday.
The comments followed a conciliatory move by the Vatican on April 17. The Holy See dropped its insistence that expelled Bishop Jerzy Mazur of Irkutsk be allowed to return to his diocese and instead named Bishop Cyryl Klimowicz to take his place.
The Russian government, apparently acting on the patriarchate’s behalf, had refused to renew the visa of Mazur, a Pole. Klimowicz, a citizen of Belarus, does not need a visa to enter Russia.
Berlusconi also indicated there is a possibility the pope could make a brief airport stop in Kazan, capital of the Russian Autonomous Republic of Tartarstan, en route to Mongolia in August to return the 16th century icon of the Madonna of Kazan.
“I have worked so that the pope’s trip to Russian can happen,” the prime minister said, referring to Kazan. He noted one obstacle was overcome when Russian experts visited the Vatican to authenticate the icon, which hangs in the pope’s living quarters.
John Paul has said he is willing to return the icon, which the Soviets sold at auction in the 1920s, but a papal trip to Mongolia has not yet been confirmed and a stop on Russian territory would present diplomatic problems.
_ Peggy Polk
Panel Warns U.S. Not to Abandon Afghan Constitution
WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal religious freedom panel warned President Bush that unless the United States intervenes, a new constitution in Afghanistan will be no improvement over the repressive Taliban regime that was overthrown by U.S. forces.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said a constitution that “codifies repression, rather than securing freedom, may well undermine the support of the American people for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.”
The panel, which advises the White House and Congress on religious freedom issues, said the new Afghan constitution, which is currently being drafted, must guarantee religious freedom for all Afghans, not subject non-Muslims to Islamic law, prohibit harsh punishments used by the Taliban and not allow blasphemy or “offending Islam” to be used by hard-liners to stifle debate.
In a letter to the president, chairwoman Felice Gaer said post-Taliban freedoms may be curtailed under a new constitution unless the United States uses its “considerable influence” to help ensure that human and religious rights are protected.
“Outside of Kabul, what passes for justice all too often appears to be arbitrary decisions dispensed by ill-educated mullahs or dictated by powerful local leaders,” the panel said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Yemeni Man Testifies That He Killed American Missionaries
(RNS) A Yemeni man suspected of having ties to al-Qaida has testified that he killed three American missionaries at a Southern Baptist hospital because he believed they were trying to convert Muslims.
Abed Abdul Razak Kamel told a court in Jibla, Yemen, on Sunday (April 20) that he planned the Dec. 30 attack for a year and a half, the Associated Press reported.
“I acted out of a religious duty … and in revenge for those who converted Muslims from their religion and made them unbelievers,” said Kamel at the opening of his trial in southern Yemen.
The 30-year-old man said he entered the hospital hiding a semiautomatic rifle under his clothes and then opened fire on a staff meeting, shooting each of his targets twice.
Kamel further testified he traveled to Jibla in July 2001 and began to scout his target by frequently visiting the hospital and asking about its activities.
“I found out that they were truly converting Muslims into Christians,” he said.
Residents of Jibla have said the Americans working at the hospital never discussed religion. Yemeni law bars non-Muslims from proselytizing in the country, which is overwhelmingly Muslim.
The three Americans who were killed were Kathleen A. Gariety of Wauwatosa, Wis., Martha C. Meyers of Montgomery, Ala., and William E. Koehn, a native of Cimarron, Kansas. Donald W. Caswell, from Levelland, Texas, was injured.
Kamel said he coordinated the attack with Ali al-Jarallah, another suspected Muslim extremist who is accused in the shooting death of a Yemeni leftist politician two days before the hospital was attacked.
Neither Kamel nor the prosecutor mentioned al-Qaida, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, on Sunday. But Yemeni security officials have said Kamel may belong to a terrorist cell with links to al-Qaida.
The prosecutor asked for the death penalty in Kamel’s case.
Quote of the Day: Boston College theology professor Tom Beaudoin
(RNS) “It’s like joining the Democratic Party after (President) Clinton. You don’t have the idea that the leaders are perfect. You don’t need perfect humans around you to worship a perfect God.”
_ Tom Beaudoin, who teaches theology at Boston College, speaking about how converts to Catholicism do not have an idealistic sense of the church. He was quoted by USA Today.
DEA END RNS
